Serco has announced it will hold on to its environmental services and leisure operations instead of selling them like it had previously planned.

The move is part of Serco’s wider strategy to refocus business towards the public sector. The company informed in a statement that the two units “provide frontline services to public sector customers”, and that Serco feels “there is real merit in retaining a broad offering to these important customers.”

Serco’s environmental services unit provides rubbish collection, recycling and waste collection services for 17 local authorities in the UK; its leisure operations encompasses 70 leisure centres through the country.

The announcement comes right after another of the outsourcing giant’s operations, the Caledonian Sleeper rail between Scotland and London, was rocked by a worker’s strike over malfunctioning trains.

According to the RMT union, trains operated by Serco were found to have more than 200 defects such as disconnected smoke detectors, inoperable toilets, and lightening and heating systems not working.

Last week, Serco revealed that profits for 2016 would be lower than expected. The sale of the company’s offshore BPO division in India and its lack of new contracts win were advanced as the cause for the discouraging 2016 forecast.

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